


You Can't Go Home Again

by lumosdragon



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Childhood Memories, Coming of Age, Hurt/Comfort, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 19:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20971922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosdragon/pseuds/lumosdragon
Summary: There’s an undeniable relief to forgetting it all. Except that when he forgets the bad part, the good part goes with it.There was a good part, wasn’t there?





	You Can't Go Home Again

There’s something about summer. He wakes up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding in his chest, the metal taste of fear in the back of his throat. Nightmares, he tells himself, just nightmares, but the panic is real enough to unsettle him. He itches with dissatisfaction. There are days when the sun is bright and the sky is blue, and he is overcome by a vague, plaintive longing – for what, though? He can’t put his finger on it. He wants something, but he doesn’t know what he wants, or maybe he does know and is pretending he doesn’t. What’s the difference?

It’s too hot, and he thinks – am I forgetting something? Something about summer. It’s the most claustrophobic time of the year, the most anxious time, but also the most sentimental. The sentimentality is the worst part. Is there anything more basic and boring than _sentiment?_

*

There’s an undeniable relief to forgetting it all. All the trauma, all the humiliation, all the fear. It’s almost a gift. Except that when he forgets the bad part, the good part goes with it. There was a good part, wasn’t there? Kind of, sort of, maybe. He’s reluctant to admit it, but it’s _possible_ that he experienced capital-F Feelings once. That was the power of being young and dumb in the summer.

He’s forgotten the Feelings of summertime. The idiotic sweetness of being a teenager with a crush. The paralyzing weight of being a teenager with the _wrong _crush. He had no idea how to handle himself; he careened and teetered and ran his mouth, getting louder and more ridiculous with every moment of panicked confusion. Sometimes it was as though his brain short-circuited, and he couldn’t think, his head was too full of static and alarm bells, so he just laughed and hoped nobody noticed that he was a garbage fire of a human being.

He sat in class, staring out the window and drifting into vague, exhilarating daydreams. He tossed and turned in bed at night, tormented by the knowledge that he was the only person in the world to feel things. He wasn’t good at feeling; he was doing it all wrong; but maybe he wanted to do it wrong. He was a one-man freak show, which wasn’t too bad as long as no one else realized. He was going to be alone for the rest of his life.

(It is the prerogative of every teenager with a crush to be a drama queen, and he exercised this privilege liberally.)

Being in love was so stupid, but it was also kind of great? Nothing was ever as precious and lovely and intense and miserable as those Feelings. It’s too bad he lost all that, but forgetting comes at a price.

*

When he does return to Derry, it’s as though nothing has changed, which fucking _sucks_. It’s like he’s living every moment twice over. These are the roads he used to bike on; the woods he ran through; the houses he passed by; the faces he thought he’d left behind. Each place is layered with a memory from childhood, when this hellhole was his entire world. The past is a cage he used to live in, and he’s contorting himself to keep fitting inside the bars. It’s suffocating.

But with the bad comes the good (kind of, sort of, maybe). His friends, for one thing. He remembers what it was like when he didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to _fight back_. And – his best friend. Married now, taller, older, but when he looks at him it’s like looking at the streets of Derry – layered with a memory from childhood, when this person was his entire world. His hometown is too small for him, but the life he made for himself outside isn’t much bigger. He adjusts his glasses and laughs. He’s suffocating.

*

It could have gone some other way. He spent years ignoring his own helpless, hopeless, guilty fantasy of the life he wanted to have. It’s possible there was a better way – definitely there was a better way – but he was a kid. He didn’t know shit. He was just a kid.

Maybe if he wasn’t such a smartass. Maybe if he could admit that he was sometimes afraid of being alone. Maybe if he hadn’t grown up where he did, in a town that wanted to see him fail.

They held hands once, their palms bloody and raw. It was a pact, sealing them to a duty they shouldn’t have had to take on in the first place. They shouldn’t have been making that promise. They should have just been holding hands.

He should have had another life, one where forgetting wasn’t a blessing, where there were things worth remembering. It should have been different.

*

He can come back to Derry, but it will never be the same. In the summer he finds himself reaching for something just out of reach, a dream he had, a Feeling, but when he finally catches it, it falls apart. He’s not a teenager anymore. It should have been different, but it wasn’t, and the person he used to be is never coming back.

He’s staring down the worn tarmac road, baked hot by the sun. He’s biking down the worn tarmac road, baked hot by the sun. His heart flutters, his mind reels. He can’t stop talking, because if he stops, he’ll have to admit: this is what I want, me and him, riding side by side for the rest of our lives. He remembers the kid on his bike, and he scorns him, but he is also so sorry for him. Just a kid. He should have been allowed to have the things he wanted. He should have been allowed to imagine a future.

He’s not going to let himself forget. He isn’t going to crush himself down either. For the first time in a long time he can admit that he doesn’t want to go back. He wants to find a way to move forward. Somehow, he wants to figure out a new way to live. For all the suffering, the struggle, the fucked-up shit he went through, the fears that came to life, the imaginations that never came true, this is still his life. He’s going to see it to the end if it kills him. He owes himself that much, right?


End file.
